Weekly Wine Meal – 30.7

This week we decided to try a rose, which fits wonderfully to the Israeli worm summer days. I got to know Clos de Gat winery real good at a vertical tasting held at Michael Rab’s, I can defiantly say that this winery make some excellent wine.

Color: Refreshing bright red with orange tint.

Nose: Blossom with a bit of strawberry.

Pallet: Dominated by red grapefruit with saddle bitterness. Some marmalade can be noticed from time to time.

Overall a fun and light wine that vanished of the bottle quickly.

Dalton – Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

Today we had a chance to try another wine from the Dalton winery (We already tried their Merlot from the same vintage) which is a medium size winery located in the upper Galilee region in the north of Israel.

It fair to say that we were disappointed with this wine, however, it is also safe to say that it wasn’t the wines fault. For all of you with the puzzled looks this is why – This wine was laying in our office a bit over a year, until the guy who was holding it decided to give it to us for our weekly wine meal. The wine was haled in very pour conditions as the bottle suffered from both heat and direct light.

We decided to try it anyway, and eventually it turned out as an interesting experience, since we got to see first hand what happens to a wine when it is haled in improper conditions. Now for the wine review:

pouring the wine into the glass we noticed that the color was odd. Even though this is a very young wine the color was somewhere between Burgundy and brown, which would have suggested a wine far more mature. It was also noticeable that the wine wasn’t as clear as you might expect a 3 years old wine. On the nose dark fruit and wood were noticeable alongside some acidity which did not vanish even some 45 minutes after we opened the bottle. On the pallet we noticed blackberries an berries mixed with a bit of tobacco, there was also some sour feel and acidity. The overall taste was off with a strong pinch of alcohol at the end.

I promise to myself to re taste this wine soon enough and see how a properly stored version of this wine feels like. It was an interesting educational experience. However I don’t plan on trying this again.

Weekly Wine Meal 7-May-2009 (Dalton Winery)

This week we decided to try something from Dalton winery. We haven’t had a chance to taste anything from them for awhile now.
Looking trough their wines we came across a bottle that we never heard of. This wine cannot even be found on the winery’s site yet.

Alma – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet franc – 2007
Color – Deep purple with Rubi edges
Nose – Cherry and a bit of plum
Pallet – Plum and a bit of vanilla (I think that someone mentioned tobacco as well). At the end of every sip you could feel the alcohol pinch.

This wine wasn’t very exciting and we had quite a few that were better for the same price scale.
It looks like this wine has not yet matured and should evolve a bit more in order to reach its full potential.

To summarize it was nice but non of us will try it again soon.
Cheers